


Above us only sky

by elanorelle



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-07
Updated: 2011-08-07
Packaged: 2017-10-22 08:12:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/235983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elanorelle/pseuds/elanorelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam still prays, even now, though he's not really sure who he's praying to, anymore.</p><p>(Episode tag 5x16. Originally posted to LJ 03/04/2010.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Above us only sky

**Author's Note:**

> For salt_burn_porn. Prompt: _lately I'm a desperate believer / but I'm walking in a straight line_. Title from "Imagine" by John Lennon, though I was listening to the cover by A Perfect Circle when I wrote this.

Sam didn't always believe in God.

When he was young, faith wasn't something the Winchesters bought into, and the Bible was a useful resource and not much else. Sometimes, usually when they were somewhere in the Bible Belt and their options were limited, he and Dean would watch the religious channels, the pastors and their sermons like so much white noise, Dean scoffing at their talk of demons and devils and the evil that dwells in men's hearts.

"Like they know squat about evil," he'd say, rubbing at his latest scar or fiddling with new bandages, like they were proof of his own experience of the subject, infinitely more convincing than empty words yelled from a pulpit.

Sam nodded in agreement, even though he was only eleven and he didn't know much about evil yet, either.

By the time he was fifteen, he did, more than he'd care to, and at school in his English class he'd met a girl who had _god is dead_ written across her notebook in red Sharpie.

Her name was Elizabeth, and Sam never kissed her (though he wanted to), but he spent long lunch breaks listening to her rant about God and how, if he was so omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, then how come the last hundred years had gone quite like they had. Why two World Wars? Why the Holocaust? Why Rwanda and Hiroshima and Nagasaki? It didn't make sense, she said. No benevolent God would have allowed this.

Sam thought back to his own, smaller catastrophes: the time Dean nearly got his head taken off by an angry spirit wielding a very real axe, or when Dad went missing for nearly a week and came back a drunken wreck, so that it took them two more days to see him through the worst and make sure he didn't choke on his own vomit. A hundred wounds and almost-deaths and the fact that Sam had never seen a school year in and out with the same group of people, that he had never been allowed a puppy or his own room or even five minutes of normality in fifteen years.

"It's bullshit," Elizabeth was saying, and Sam agreed, because if this life was what God thought Sam deserved, then God could go fuck himself.

They left Minnesota and Elizabeth behind after three weeks, but Sam kept for years the piece of paper she'd handed him in class one day that had lyrics from "Imagine" scrawled across it in the same red Sharpie.

Then came Stanford, and Sam was alone for the first time in his life: not like in Flagstaff, where part of the thrill had been knowing that Dean would find him eventually, or on walks by himself after school or when Dean and Dad were busy cleaning weapons Sam wasn't responsible enough to handle yet or doing research Sam refused to take part in.

No, this was him truly alone, without even Dad's number, or Dean's, because he'd lost his cell phone somewhere along the journey from Sacramento. It hadn't been intentional, and it wasn't until mid-way through his first week at Stanford that he realised what had happened. When he did, it felt like he couldn't breathe, chest squeezed tight with the knowledge that he was doing this, that he was friendless, that he'd left everything and everyone behind, and for what?

He didn't even know if he was going to _like_ college. So far, everything had been confusing, almost too much, and classes hadn't even started yet.

His roommate (Dan? Dave? Sam doesn't even remember his face anymore) came back and found him curled in a ball on the bed, not crying only because his whole body felt numb and unresponsive, and even crying would have taken too much co-ordinated effort.

Dave (Don?) seemed to think it was normal, that Sam was homesick, and asked him if there was somebody back home he could call.

"No," Sam had said. "There's no one. It's just me."

Dan (Dea—but no, not that, definitely not that) gave Sam a sympathetic look, probably thinking this meant Sam was an orphan, some foster care kid with no family, and he said: "You don't have to be alone, Sam."

That Sunday he took Sam along to his church, but while the people were friendly enough and the service was bright and uplifting, Sam didn't feel it was really for him. He said as much to Dave afterwards, who looked marginally disappointed but just said: "You know, God listens to all of us, always. Prayer can be a powerful thing: maybe you should try it some time."

So Sam did.

He didn't put his hands together, or close his eyes, or start by saying "Dear God," or anything like that, the way kids always did on TV. He just lay in his bed listening to the wind and the rain outside and let his prayers take form inside his head.

He prayed for Dean, and for Dad, and for Bobby and Pastor Jim. Then he prayed for himself.

The next day, Sam found a ten dollar bill on the sidewalk, got the job he'd been angling for at the campus coffee-shop, and was invited to three parties that were happening over the weekend, which he'd feared he might be spending alone in his dorm room with a book. The sun was bright and the sky was blue and his laundry didn't come out grey or shrunk, for once.

He wasn't naïve enough to think that his prayers had actually been answered, but it was enough to make him believe that maybe there was something _good_ going on in the universe, as well as evil. That maybe he could believe in something bigger than himself, something that would, from time to time, give him good days like today and not just the shit hand he'd been playing his whole life so far.

It was enough. So he kept on praying.

He still prays, even now, though he's not really sure who he's praying to, anymore. God, it seems, is absent and unfeeling, deaf to voices raised in either defiance or devotion, and to have it confirmed by Joshua that He hears but chooses not to listen is almost enough to make Sam pack it in and give up. It certainly seems to have been enough for Dean.

But Sam prays anyway, because God gives him good days, and God gave him Dean, and God gave them all the wide green earth, and that has to count for something. God even seems to have allowed Sam redemption enough to take up a place in Paradise, rather than the one in Hell he's sure he most richly deserves.

So Sam prays. Dean knows this, and that's almost certainly why, when he comes back to the motel room after a trip to the store (Sam assumes liquor, is proven right when Dean comes in with a fifth of whiskey in one hand, a six-pack in the other) and spots Sam on his knees by the side of the bed, he says, "God's not listening, Sam. Didn't you get the memo?"

Actually, Sam's looking for the change he just dropped, but this is the first time Dean's spoken to him unprompted for three days, and Sam's prepared to take any opening.

"Just because _He's_ not," Sam says, "That doesn't mean nobody is."

"So, what?" Dean asks, dropping the booze on the table by the door, setting himself down wearily on the bed Sam's knelt next to. "Buddha? Allah? The Old Ones? Who're you praying to, Sam?"

Sam shrugs. "Maybe no one," he admits. "But maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe it's enough just to do it."

Dean snorts derisively, and he's still not looking directly at Sam, hasn't since he entered the room.

"I know you do it too," Sam says. "I've heard you." He hasn't, actually, but that doesn't change the truth of the statement, and Dean doesn't contradict him, so Sam presses on. "It's important, Dean, to believe in something. Something better. That's the only way we can win this—"

"But there isn't something better, is there?" Dean says, bitterly. "There's nothing for me to fucking believe in, not even—" _Not even you_ , he doesn't say.

Sam doesn't know how he can possibly respond, whether there'll ever again be anything he can say or do to get Dean to forgive him for all the things he knows he's done, and a thousand other hurts he's sure he must have inflicted without realising. Right now, he doesn't try, but instead clambers up on the bed next to Dean and takes the risk of resting his forehead against Dean's. He's prepared for a shove, or for Dean to just stand up and walk away, but in fact what happens is Dean turns his head and presses their lips together, tasting already of the alcohol he must have been drinking on the drive back to the motel.

It takes Sam by surprise, though it probably shouldn't. Since Dean came back from Hell, they only seem to do this at the moments that are most ill-advised: the times when it'll do the most damage possible to their already fucked-up relationship. Sam thinks maybe if they could sort out this part of their lives, all the rest might follow, but somehow it never works out like that. Sam fucks up, or more rarely Dean does, or maybe destiny just screws them over once again, and inevitably they end up here, twisted up together and not talking about the things that come between them but rather hoping that lips and tongues and hands all might help fix what's broken.

They never do.

Still, Sam pushes Dean back onto the bed, runs his hands down to hook into Dean's waistband and brushes his fingers against the skin there. The muscles in Dean's stomach flex and shift, and Sam moves down to run his lips over them, opens up Dean's zipper and puts his mouth on Dean's cock.

Dean moans – a broken, unhappy sound – and squirms underneath Sam like he can work his way out of his own skin if he tries hard enough. Sam lays his hands on Dean's sides to try and steady him, but Dean only grabs one of them and yanks Sam up the bed to lie on top of him again, his dick grinding up against Sam's stomach. It can't be comfortable, being under Sam like this but then, comfort isn't something either of them seem capable of giving right now, and so Sam stays where he's put and works a hand between them to take hold of Dean's dick again.

"You ever pray for _this_?" Dean asks, voice hoarse and breath coming ragged and quick.

"Sometimes," Sam says.

"That's fucked up."

"Apparently not so fucked up that I can't get into Heaven," Sam points out, though he regrets it when he sees the way Dean's face shuts down, blank and distant, and he figures this is where Dean gets up and walks over to his own bed, drinks himself into fitful sleep.

But in the end, he just says: "I really don't want to talk about that," and kisses Sam again.

They shed their clothes and press up close to one another; slick skin and frenzied touches and no finesse or care for anything other than getting off.

Dean comes first, with barely a whimper, his free hand gripping at Sam's arm hard enough to bruise. Sam follows quickly, gasping into Dean's neck and wondering if dying felt worse than this.

He assumes, afterwards, that Dean will make his way to the other bed, but whether with intent or just through pure exhaustion, Dean stays where he is.

Sam reaches over to turn off the light, but even when he does the orange glow of the streetlights outside still filters in through the threadbare curtains, eerie half-light that reminds Sam of distant fires and the sun sunk low on the horizon. Perhaps the end-of-days will be lit just so.

"It's not going to get any better, Sam," Dean says, so quietly Sam can barely hear him. "This is it. Faith won't change a goddamned thing."

Sam closes his eyes and prays anyway.


End file.
